(TibetanReview.net, Feb15, 2018) – China’s top official on Tibetan affairs has on Feb 13 called on Gyaltsen Norbu, chosen by Beijing in 1995 as Tibet’s second most prominent religious figure, the Panchen Lama, to make new national unity contributions, according to the official Xinhua news agency Feb 13.

The report said You Quan, head of the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, met with the “11th Panchen Lama Bainqen Erdini Qoigyijabu” to extend extended New Year greetings ahead of the Chinese Spring Festival and the Tibetan Losar which begins on Feb 16.

You asked “Panchen Lama” to make new contributions to safeguard national unification and ethnic unity and adapt Tibetan Buddhism to socialist society, the report said. He was also stated to have encouraged Gyaltsen Norbu to continue progress in Buddhist research and cultural and ethical areas.

The report added that the “Panchen Lama” agreed with You and said that he will carry forward his predecessors’ long-upheld tradition of patriotism and love of the religion.

His predecessor, the 10th Panchen Lama Choekyi Gyaltsen, had been severely persecuted, publicly humiliated in the Politburo, jailed, tortured, and kept under house arrest from 1962 to 1982 for presenting to the Chinese leadership a 70,000-character petition outlining brutal atrocities committed in Tibet by Chinese leaders. Mao called his petition “a poisoned arrow shot at the Party by reactionary feudal overlords”. And the year before he died on Jan 28, 1989 he said Tibet had lost more than it had benefited from Chinese rule.